The present invention is directed to the field of drug testing generally and more specifically to a color test for methaqualone and mecloqualone which may be easily performed by a police officer.
Drug abuse has become a growing problem in this country, with many pharmaceutical substances being abused by drug users. One of those substances which is now popularly abused is methaqualone which is also known by the trademarked name Quaaludes, and in street terminology, "'ludes". Recently numerous tablets appearing to be Quaaludes (Lemmon 714, or Rorer 714) have been seized by narcotic agents and have been found to contain substances other than methaqualone. Diazepam (valium) or diphenhydramine (benadryl) are most commonly encountered. In some cases these tablets have been found to contain little or no methaqualone. This has presented a serious problem for drug enforcement officials which may have no idea as to the content of tablets which they are "buying" in order to make drug arrests. This in turn has led to increasing difficulties in establishing probable cause for arrest and for search warrants.
Color tests for the detection of organic compounds are quite old in the art. Hugo Schiff developed a color spot test as early as 1859 for uric acid. Spot test did not become a matter of attention until around 1920. Since that time, the use of spot tests as a means for indicating a possible class of compounds being present has become, and still is becoming an ever widening field.
Numerous spot tests have been developed over the last one hundred years for the indication and/or identification of various drugs. Not until fairly recently, however, has their necessity ventured into the field of criminal justice, as related to law enforcement and forensic science. Today, with an ever widening horizon of new pharmaceutical compounds, as well as illicit drugs, the field of color testing as applied to forensic science and the criminal justice system has had a tendency to lag behind.
A color test has been developed for the indication of cannabinoids. A reagent, usually ethanol, vanillin, and acetaldehyde, is added to the test material, after which a second reagent, usually concentrated hydrocholoric acid, is added to the test solution. Should cannabinoids be present a blue-purple will develop. Upon the development of the color complex, chloroform is added, and the test solution is shaken. If cannabinoids are present the color will extract in the lower chloroform layer. This test for cannabinoids is called the Duquenois-Levine color test. The Duquenois-Levine color test is chemically based on the presence of the 1, 3-dioxybenzene (resorcinal) partial structure. It appears that the reaction proceeds via electrophilic substitution of the aromatic ring of the substrate by the protonated aldehydic group of vanillin or acetaldehyde or both. The Duquenois-Levine color test is considered positive if a purple color is extracted.
A number of other tests exist such as the Van Slyke, Liebermans, and Millon's. The use of nitrous acid in determining the number of free amine groups in amino acids was developed by Van Slyke. In this test, the nitrogen gas liberated was measured.
The Lieberman test uses sodium or potassium nitrite in concentrated sulfuric acid. This test is generally used to test for phenols. The reaction is based on the conversion of a portion of the phenol into p-nitrosophenol, by the action of nitrous acid, and condensation of the resulting nitrosophenol with the unchanged phenol which leads to the production of a colored indophenol. The Lieberman test was tested for color indication of methaqualone but was found inferior to the present invention in that it gave a positive indication on a much larger number of substances. In the Millon test, the reaction is the probable formation of a nitro compound, which then reacts with phenol. The test procedure, reagents, and chemistry are essentially dissimilar from the test of the present invention.
Another color test uses sodium cobaltinitrite to detect o-nitrosophenols. The brown cobaltic chelate is extracted into chloroform. Acetic acid is used as the solvent for the reaction. The present invention differs in that the nitrososation of methaqualone (or mecloqualone) is the final product formation step and thus the chloroform extract is more of a discerning step than in the cobaltic chelate reaction.
The present commercially available methaqualone test is made by Becton & Dickinson and consists of a two step procedure. It utilizes two ampules in a plastic bag. After the unknown powder is placed in the bag, it is sealed, and a first ampule containing a pink solution is broken. A second ampule containing a water-white liquid is then broken, (the second ampule probably is a dilute sulfuric acid solution). A blue solution or blue specks in a pink solution gives a positive result. When tested on a pharmaceutical Quaalude tablet, the results were not the definitive colors expected for a positive indication. Several attempts resulted in one indefinite positive, several questionable results, and several negatives. These results agree with comments from several police officers who have used the Becton & Dickinson test and found it inadequate.